UNC Basketball: The Tar Heels will participate in the 2024 Maui Invitational

We’ve known for a while now that North Carolina was going to headline the 2024 Maui Invitational. Yesterday, we found out who was in the supporting cast.

The field is now set: UNC, Auburn, Colorado, Connecticut, Dayton, Iowa State, Memphis, and Michigan State.

There are plenty of heavy-hitter programs in the field, especially with UConn fresh off this year’s national championship. A lot can happen between this off-season and next summer, especially with the transfer portal as is, so let’s not make predictions just yet. Trying to handicap the field today is a fool’s errand. We’ll return to that next summer.

But in the meantime, we can look forward to seeing some new Tar Heels such as Ian Jackson, Elliot Cadeau, Drake Powell, and James Brown playing three games in three days as part of ESPN’s Feast Week, the week of Thanksgiving 2024. Don’t forget that Carolina is also slated to play at Hawaii right before the Maui Invitational, so make sure you book a flight to Oahu first if you plan on traveling to support the Heels.

UNC has a rich history of beating up on Michigan State, but the Tar Heels owe some payback to a couple of new jack programs, most notably Auburn for beating a depleted UNC team in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, and Iowa State for defeating Carolina at last year’s Phil Knight Invitational. I do not have true UConn disdain at the moment because they still have goodwill stored in the bank for beating Duke in the 1999 national championship game.

This tournament was Roy’s favorite. Maui is a gracious host, the Lahaina Civic Center is a really neat venue to watch titan teams play against each other in a high school gym, and the vibes will be immaculate. It may be too early to predict the outcome, but it’s not too early to get excited.

ʻAʻole hiki iaʻu ke kali e ʻike iā ʻoe!